It’s been like a bath here, humidity high, a gentle storm last night. Mrs. Horse took a big drink when I came out and wrapped her legs in fancy boots to keep the flies off. She was glad for her hay cubes and hay. The redwing blackbirds, robins, meadow birds are gone. Though after I said that I saw a King bird settle in the grasses. Seems early for them to fly south. We do have a couple hawks around. And the spray and smoke from a few weeks ago can’t be good. It’s been good to see barn swallows, gold finches, cedar waxwings and doves. The other day I saw a line of barn swallows on an electric wire. They too must be getting ready to head south.
Finally, finally I found a structure for my essay collection, Baptisms of a Sorta Former Evangelical. It is very raw, but I got over my very real fear and even shame to even look at the stories because I’m admitting hard things about myself in the spirit of “hidden things shouted from the rooftops” a phrase Jesus used when he was warning the disciples against hypocrisy.
There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. (Luke 12: 2 – 3, NIV).
I figure I’d shout out my secrets, though I will need to sit with some things, maybe ask what trusted readers think, because sometimes that kind of raw vulnerability isn’t useful to the reader. As I added poems from other work that filled in stories I wanted, I realized yet again how the writing tells tales on us and the people around us. Maybe because it comes from a different, hidden place that remembers and picks up on the underneath stuff. Sometimes I think poetry is as effective or more effective than therapy for kicking up forgotten things.
There are essays I’ve sat on for years. I remember Jonis Agee saying, “Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean you have to publish it” so I left them in the file golder. When “How I Shucked What Others Thought of Me or a Virgin and the Creative Writers Workshop” was in the top thirty of The Masters Review I cussed because the essay flies in the face of progressive mores. It’s not easy fighting for your identity, who you know yourself to be, even though your mother, and assorted people think differently.
I found the joy of making again. Or perhaps I found the joy of confession. Or both.
Reading Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams gave me a structure. She’s organized the book into sections and placed essays that aligned with the theme of that section. For instance under “The Epic Documentation of the Glorians” she organized essays having to do her work as a professor.
She defines Glorians by saying,
“A Glorian is an encounter. A Glorian is a meeting with elan vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace” (15). She calls it the holy ordinary. vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace” (15). She calls it the holy ordinary.
My book had already started organizing itself into similar sections as I worked on it. At first I was going to use the elements-water, fire, air, earth but found that the essay groupings were shaped into essay titles that followed the theme of that grouping.
Here are the section titles: Baptisms of a Sorta Former Evangelical; Could I See God, Did I Want to?; In Search of Unicorns; Bruce’s Gifts; How I Made Peace With My Name and My Ass, The Water Horse.
It’s rough and raw but I used Sarabande’s extended deadline and the gracious invitation: “We pick what we like. There will be no judge or agent.” We even had to click a box saying we’re not represented by an agent, which tells me they are serious about reading fresh voices. For the first time working with this material ,I feel that I have a book. I’m popping with ideas how to fix and tighten some sections. The book raises some artistic and spiritual questions I need to address (that wisdom of the inner poet, the Holy Spirit, speaking).
This felt anonymous because I have an ice cube’s chance for them to like it. Or maybe not. Sometimes editors are drawn to raw. Do pray that the book will speak to a reader. (God is lavish that way. Perhaps the book has been written for me and that one reader.)
I had a page limit of 250 pages so I turned poems from When the Plow Cuts and The Grieving Dreams into prose to fit part of the story I wanted to tell. I worked blindly and with joy, the joy of making something beautiful. There are essays that are more well written than I remembered, and essays that need trimming. And essays that are so vulnerable they need shaping. But I found the play again and hope. The big deal is that I pushed past my fear, and yes my privacy, to put the words down, to see them for myself.
When I came across Joan Krumm in Woodmans, she asked about my young dog, Aiden. She said you need a dream again, and has been training me privately to get ready for the show ring, a world I’m familiar with from having finished a few champions in the 90’s. This elder woman, who wears beautiful blouses and lipstick, light up something in me, like the wise women in the old stories, not just for my young dog, though she is giving me good tools to call him into being a good dog, but also my writing work.
This frees me up for other work too. I have a collection of poems that might need to be thrown into prose and expanded, which is up next. I sent that to Sarabande at the proper deadline with an essay added at the end. And prequels and sequels to The River Caught Sunlight, books I’m relieved I didn’t publish when I drafted them.
I don’t know if I’ll share these essays with you or not. An anonymous editor, like telling your secrets to a stranger on the plane, is less risky. And some essays are long, and my stats show you all don’t go in for long pieces. (I published “How I Met and Married Bruce” here already.) This book may be just for me.
Substack has added an AI check that I am turning off. It’s absurd that a machine is checking whether we are using a machine. This being suspicious of whether writers are using it or not, is another pain in the butt coming about as a result of AI, AI that has been pushed on us, in cultlike ways when it suddenly showed up summarizing our emails, in search engines and our word processors. The fact we have to keep draft after draft to prove we made our writing adds clutter and another barrier to already hard work. It’s not good that the reader writer relationship is no longer based on trust.
Three of my photos won second place at the county fair. Bruce’s Christmas ornament won first place. I broke through the block to declutter and sold a few things at a local tack sale, but what a pain to put everything back. (I want to disperse most of my Breyer horse collection.) Well, that’s all I know for now.
When I started this essay, the air was like a hot shower, but some cold fronts have cooled and cleared the air. When I’ve stepped out of the shade on my morning walks, the sun’s hand on my face has been nice. The locusts are loud. The wildflowers on the road still entrance me. This morning Aiden jumped after a bee on the bee balm.
References
Terry Tempest Williams. Glorians. New York, Grove Press. 2026
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